There's no doubt that, for extended sailing, some way to keep the
batteries up while using an electrical a/p is a must. Frankly, life
underway, without some form of automatic steering, is just flat lacking
in many ways. With an a/p, there's more chance for crew interaction and
a chance to just watch the world go by instead of doing nothing but
keeping an eye on the compass, sails, and wheel.

The Raymarine system works well and doesn't generally leave me thinking
"why did I make this choice?". I can think of things I'd like done
differently but so it goes. [grin]

Sailing OWTW so close to the wind it almost verges on pinching up, the
a/p eventually will be fooled by a header and start to luff up; fall off
a few points and this isn't a problem. Sailing by keeping the apparent
wind angle constant is a quick lesson in "where you wind up isn't always
where you wanted to go"; the alternative, steering a fixed heading,
usually means trimming, trimming, and more trimming, when it doesn't
mean tacking, tacking, tacking. Ya pays yer money, ya takes yer choice...

Cheers,
   Rick Emerson

Rick wrote:

> Hi Rick E.
> The Raymarine option is definately being weighed. My friend Boris,
> owner of Midbay Marine, sells the Raymarine units. He feels that this,
> coupled with sufficient solar panels and a good supply of spare parts
> is the way to go. I am planning a trip to Isla Mujeres, Mexico after
> the Hurricane Season. I have a Raymarine ST 4000 Autopilot but would
> prefer to sail to wind direction over compass course. The electronic
> method would be much more cost effective.
> [...]

-----------------------------------------------------------
Baba Panda and Tashiba Owners Mailing List --
For more info, please check out the FAQ...
http://www.ballreich.net/hypermail/baba-l/faq.html
Received on Tue Jul 18 11:03:06 2006